Social Media Synthesis Essay

Synthetic Essay

Esele R. Isi Virginia Commonwealth University UNIV 112 Jake Khoury 6 July 2024.

Sharing

Throughout the last two decades, more people have been posting almost every single second of their lives on social media. Starting from blogs to YouTube vlogs, and now dedicated pages. Many parents focus on sharing about their families, especially their children, which has sparked controversy. Some people believe that posting private moments of minors lives online can have long-term negative effects, coining the term "sharing." The stakeholders in this issue are the parents, children, and fans. Parents are responsible for sharing the media, the children are the content, and the fans consume and interact with it. Both fans

This is a complex question with no easy answer. If some parents decide to stop posting their children online, with how large social media is, there will still be countless other parents who will continue. What is considered acceptable to post is also a difficult issue to navigate. If people come to compensation to limit how personal their media can be, there will still be the issue of people possibly crossing boundaries, because privacy is subjective. Everybody has their definition of what they consider personal and private. Furthermore, some people rely on social media to make a living. They feed their families through the revenue they earn from brand deals and supportive fans. For some, if they were to stop posting their children, their way of life could be compromised. Finally, even if parents post less about their kids, some people may still search for information about the children and even harass the parents due to the obsessive nature of fans with their favorite

As previously stated, most of those children have no control over what goes online and often don't have access to the accounts, depending on their age. They also have no say in brand deals and monetization. The topic of Sharenting revolves around the children. They are the ones who have to live with the consequences, whether good or bad. It all comes down to their boundaries and the choices they make in life. Some children seem unaffected by the situation, while others have been vocal about their disdain. This is when the conversation about digital footprint comes in. In most family or child-centered social media accounts, the content rarely features the parents. It is almost always exclusively about the children. It is the vulnerable moments of the children that are posted, viewed, and shared. So far, most researchers and previously Sharented Children believe that parents should not be posting their children online. They claim that it exposes them to bullying, public safety concerns, and can lead to neglect. In “When the child is born into the Internet: Sharing as a growing trend among parents on Facebook” written by Anna Brosch in 2016, “Sharenting may also expose children to ridiculing by strangers. An extreme example was the secret Facebook group consisting of mothers who were taking photos of children from other Facebook accounts before re-posting them online